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So I'm guilty as are many of not only mentioning Shadowbane often, but using it as a reference point for many things we discuss when it comes to Crowfall. Obviously there is a reason for that and I'm sure most know of the connections and similarities between the two projects by now, but I still feel somewhat apologetic whenever typing the letters SB.

While doing research on something earlier I came across this fairly good summary of what SB was, how it was received, what it's failures and triumphs were as a game and I thought I'd share it here, so that those of you who get annoyed whenever you see SB referenced but don't quite know why, might have a better understanding of what it was and why we ioved it.

My Shadowbane summary: it was a game for sadomasochists. Everyone else was churned out within a few months, leaving behind a mixture of sociopaths, psychopaths, and sycophants. Thinking back on that game is like thinking about an ex-lover that treated you terribly, but was just so damn good in bed.

To be fair I don't think anyone not suffering heavily from SB nostalgia will enjoy those emulators very much...

I went over to the magicbane forums, saw all the thinly veiled gummy bear signatures and left 2 minutes later. I don't know why anyone would play on a server run by Quietus.

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My Shadowbane summary: it was a game for sadomasochists. Everyone else was churned out within a few months, leaving behind a mixture of sociopaths, psychopaths, and sycophants.

I think of some of the Elven RP nations and some of the Lore server guilds like Virakar plus Dragonscale and King Steven weren't evil. There were small points of light even unto the end. I do agree that most of us that endured and thrived would have definitely been on the evil end of the D&D alignment scale however. Some like my guild QFT were very organized and would have been textbook Lawful Evil whilst the small bands that formed and tore themselves apart were Chaotic Evil.

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The link in the OP is a little idealistic and makes it sound like a roleplayers utopia, which was for the most part not the case. Most people played because it was a hardcore pvp game, not because of the lore (which admittedly was above average).

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It was a roleplayer's Utopia if you were a roleplayer you liked killing folks, burning down what they'd built, seeding their nightmares and crushing their dreams.

The link in the OP is a little idealistic and makes it sound like a roleplayers utopia, which was for the most part not the case. Most people played because it was a hardcore pvp game, not because of the lore (which admittedly was above average).

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I think of some of the Elven RP nations and some of the Lore server guilds like Virakar plus Dragonscale and King Steven weren't evil. There were small points of light even unto the end. I do agree that most of us that endured and thrived would have definitely been on the evil end of the D&D alignment scale however. Some like my guild QFT were very organized and would have been textbook Lawful Evil whilst the small bands that formed and tore themselves apart were Chaotic Evil.

I ran Morloch's Vengeance and can tell you that it was the definition of masochistic. Heavily restricting our race/class based strictly on lore, without an iota of thought to viability was painful. It was painful to be forced to ally with non-lore guilds in order to fight the ARAC zergs. Our alliance council meetings were in-game and in-character. Think about that. We literally roleplayed our stratagem. Classic masochism. We definitely embodied the Chaotic Evil both in-game and in real-life though.

Thanks! That was a hard one. There was a point where Sam (Meridian) didn't want to write it because he said then I couldn't leave to go work at BioWare. Which was a hard choice in itself to do. I do have another write-up on Shadowbane Lore that I need to add to the site. It is a more condensed version (but still really long... there is a lot of lore!).

Thank you for the link! I enjoyed the first part. Possibly I'll read the rest... but... I think I should now read too much, it's a kind of a spoiler to Crowfall isn't it?

Not really. There are some similarities with SB and Crowfall but I'd daresay there is a lot more differences. If you're looking for something interesting to read, I'd definitely check it out. Meridian is a fantastic writer!

One of the programs I started at WP when I was the Community Manager was the Herald program. These were essentially players who went out into the game world and chronicled the events between players. Some great stuff in there!

It's funny to think how much of my life was involved in Shadowbane. I started there on Jun 1, 2000 and left around Feb 2008. So almost 8 years of my life was about Shadowbane. Actually, it was longer than that. I used to run fan sites for it prior to that on Stratics and the Vault Network before getting hired. And even was part of a guild (Council of the Apocalypse) before splitting off to make my own guild (The Fallen [TF]). I guess it could be said I was it's biggest fanboi and the longest to work on it primarily.

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As you know by now Sb = Shadowbane. It was an mmorpg that launched in 2003. The launch did not go very well and the game died off pretty fast. There was a small but loyal following that stuck with the game but not enough to keep it from eventually having to close up shop.

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As you know by now Sb = Shadowbane. It was an mmorpg that launched in 2003. The launch did not go very well and the game died off pretty fast. There was a small but loyal following that stuck with the game but not enough to keep it from eventually having to close up shop.

I wouldn't say it died off pretty fast, it had a very good population for a long time. (relatively speaking)